


the marauders find out

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), The Marauders Discover Remus Lupin is a Werewolf, Werewolves, this isn't angsty mostly because sirius doesn't know how deadly serious it is, two cakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28707708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind
Summary: Everyone has told him to leave it alone, but Sirius wants to get to the bottom of why Remus keeps disappearing once a month.
Relationships: Sirius Black & Remus Lupin & Peter Pettigrew & James Potter
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	the marauders find out

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to kayla, izzy and ivy who helped heaps!!! sometimes you have a fic that is 90% complete in your gdocs from AUGUST and then you write the last 450 words in the middle of JANUARY and you feel like an incredibly massive fool. do not look at me, it's fine. also, shout out to my bar mitzvah students who have impressed upon me just how many words twelve-year-olds do not know how to pronounce.

Remus first disappears two weeks into term, claiming his cousin is getting married. Sirius has been to weddings before, and can understand perfectly well why Remus isn’t excited. They are extremely boring, and you’re not allowed to run around or use your lace cuffs to make cool patterns in balls of mud and then steal a bunch of cupcake liners and attempt to pass them off as fancy chocolate cupcakes. James and Peter are more focused on how cool Remus’s weekend promises to be, James because he has apparently been to weddings that he enjoyed (?!) and Peter because he’s never been to a wedding. Also, Sirius has to admit that getting to miss out on Monday’s classes is pretty handy, mostly because they have Transfiguration in the morning and he’s pretty sure McGonagall doesn’t like him. 

The point is, Remus going to his cousin’s wedding isn’t that weird, even though when he comes back he can’t tell them how many people were there, and he has to think for a moment before saying that the cake had been vanilla. Vanilla _is_ a pretty forgettable cake flavour.

It’s about a month until the next time (exactly a month, Sirius will correct himself later, in the lunar cycle) Remus disappears. This time he misses two days of classes, and it makes perfect sense that he looks so tired and pale when he returns — his mum must be pretty poorly for him to get permission to go home to visit. Sirius hopes it’s nothing too serious.

The third time, Remus begs off playing exploding snap, saying he feels like he’s going to be sick, and goes down to Madam Pomfrey. He had been looking a bit peaky that morning, and Peter thoroughly distracts Sirius and James by pointing out that if Remus has got a stomach bug, it’s only a matter of time before the rest of them start exploding out both ends. The relief when none of them do overshadows any of the obvious questions they should ask Remus when he returns for dinner the next night.

The fourth time — the fourth time will make Sirius wonder, later. It’s surely a thing that could happen to anyone, and Sirius does tell an especially good joke just before it happens. Does that make it his fault? There’s an awful lot of blood, and Slughorn pales a little when he rushes over to their cauldron to see that the gash Remus accidentally made in his hand has got green around the edges. “You’ve got badger spleen in the wound,” he mutters, waving his wand to produce a bandage from thin air. “Go tell Madam Pomfrey, she’ll get you fixed up, there’s a lad.”

When Sirius asks Remus if he wants him to go with, Remus shakes his head and just about scurries away.

Logically, he should’ve been back before the end of the lesson (who puts double Potions at the end of the day? A monster, that’s who), but he’s not there at dinner, either. They go via the hospital wing on the way back to the tower, hoping to at least get to see how gross the cut looks now (James theorises that it might’ve blown up like a balloon, and Sirius really wants to see that), but Madam Pomfrey just says Remus is sleeping off one of the potions she gave him and that she’ll release him tomorrow.

When Remus is still missing for the next morning’s Potions lesson, Slughorn looks alarmed when James tells him Remus is still in the hospital wing. Surely Slughorn should know what happens when you get badger spleen in an open wound? Sirius is so distracted by this that his Pompion Potion goes right past coral to fuschia and Slughorn makes him throw it away. And after all that, when Remus is released, he shows them the cut and his hand isn’t even a funny colour, let alone twice its usual size.

* * *

Four weeks later, Remus looks nervous at dinner even though Sirius knows for a fact that he’s already finished the Charms homework they have due tomorrow. He narrows his eyes, watching him all the way from the Great Hall to their dormitory, and can’t think of a single reason Remus would have to be looking like he’s walking towards his own execution. By the time they get to all sitting on James’s bed (it’s closest to the door), Remus’s skin looks a little grey.

“Um,” Remus says, saving Sirius from finding a way to bring up how he’s been weird all evening. He hesitates until Peter prods him in the ribs, which makes him startle so much he hits his head on one of the bedposts. That seems to knock something loose, and he says, “Madam Pomfrey said — well she says that trying to keep this from you is silly, so… The reason I keep disappearing once a month is because I’m ill, and I need to have monthly treatments to, you know, keep that at bay.”

Sirius shuffles backwards a little, wondering if it’s contagious.

“What is it?” James asks, looking interested. Before Remus has a chance to respond, he frowns. “I mean, I hope it’s not — is it really painful?”

“Er, it’s — the pain comes and goes, I guess,” Remus said, looking down at his hands and picking at the edge of one of his thumbnails. “I’ve got spavinalgia. It’s — people are just born with it, you know, and Healers think it’s your own magic attacking your body? Which. Anyway, that’s where I’ve been going every month. I didn’t want to make you think I was… weak or poorly or not be my friends.” 

At this point, Sirius can see Remus’s hands are shaking slightly, and his voice has become quieter and quieter as his little speech continues. Sirius fancies he can almost see Remus shrinking into himself.

“So it’s not contagious?” Sirius clarifies. It doesn’t sound like it is, but it’s always best to be sure. If it is, he can always be Remus’s friend at a safe physical distance.

Remus shakes his head.

“Well that’s alright then,” Peter says, and Remus looks up, still looking like he’s bracing for someone to hit him. No one does hit him, because that would be stupid, and he studies each of their faces in turn, though Sirius isn’t quite sure what he’s looking for. He must find it, though, because he breaks into a small smile.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, of course,” James says, and Sirius nods. Remus lets out a breath and straightens back up. His smile is bigger now, and colour is returning to his face.

“Well, I have to go in tomorrow — I’ve got it all sorted out with the teachers, but Madam Pomfrey said I was going to run out of relatives to be ill or get married if I kept lying to you.”

“You mean you didn’t go to your cousin’s wedding?” Peter says, and Remus shakes his head. Sirius hums, supposing that explains why he was so uncertain about the cake flavour.

“What kind of things happen when you have spavin-whatsits, then?” James asks. “You’re not, like, weeing yourself or anything, so it can’t be that embarrassing.”

Remus looks uncomfortable. “I’ve — when I was younger I’ve had people stop being my friend because of it. I didn’t want you to — you know,” he says, trailing off, back to looking down at his hands. “Mostly I just… hurt a lot? And the potions I have to take make my skin all thin and I bleed really easily. But I’m not — you can’t catch it.”

Remus seems pretty hung up on that, so Sirius moves over next to him and gives him a hug. But gently, to make sure it doesn’t hurt.

* * *

When Remus goes to the Hospital Wing (he said that they can’t visit him because he’s just asleep the whole time), James has the bright idea of visiting the library. Well, he says, “I wonder how we find out more about this spavinasia thing, you know, to see whether we can help him. It’s not like he’s going to suggest anything.”

“The library?” Peter suggests, which really means he’s the one who thinks of it.

Either way, they find themselves at the library, giving up on the card catalogue in short order to ask Madam Pince where they could find books on magical disease. She stares at them suspiciously for entirely too long before directing them to a small, dusty corner. Sirius supposes he’s not sure what subject magical diseases fall under — Charms? Transfiguration? Defence Against the Dark Arts? Perhaps that’s why the library’s selection is so sparse.

James is the one who leads the charge, claiming he knows things because his mum was a Healer before she had him. They find it in the intimidatingly thick tome _Wizarding Wellbeing and Magical Maladies_ , in the chapter detailing “Chronic Conditions”. “This says it presents in childhood,” James reports. “Usually but not always associated with the first signs of magical profikeny. Hmm, how do you say that one?”

“Profikensy?” Sirius offers, taking a look at how it was spelled. “I think it means when you first start doing magic accidentally?”

“Hmm. All your joints hurt, you’ve got a persistent cough and you have trouble with a lot of basic charms, if the condition isn’t well-managed. He’s done alright in Charms, I think, hasn’t he? No worse than Pete, anyway,” James says, entirely missing the offended look on Peter’s face. Before Peter can say anything, he continues, “and — oh, it says that your toes are usually green and very cold.”

“Don’t your toes go blue if they’re really cold?” Sirius asks. That was what his fingers had done that one time, when he’d lost his gloves two winters ago. The house-elf had made him put his fingers right near the fire when he came in and warming them up had hurt a lot.

“It’s due to the buildup of magical residue in your extremities,” James reads. “Apparently a common symptom is frequent nosebleeds. Has Remus ever had a nosebleed? I did once, when Jezza hit me in the face with a quaffle. It went all over my clothes.”

“Does it hurt? I hear they don’t hurt, and it just feels like you have a runny nose,” Sirius says. He has no idea who Jezza is, but that doesn’t seem that important. Not when compared to the concept of blood spurting out of your nose, which sounds awesome.

“Well, yeah, he hit me in the face with a quaffle,” James points out. He continues scanning the page before he says, “The only other thing I can find in here is that people always have a flushed face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Remus blush.” There was nothing anyone could add to that — Remus, if anything, was the palest one in their dorm. “No one’s discovered a cure yet, but they have developed potions which — not sure what that word is, but it does something to symptoms. Ooh, and application of silver to the inflamed joints seems to help — d’you have anything silver? I’m not sure I do, or what else we could do to help.”

Peter shakes his head from where he’s drawing a picture of James in the thick layer of dust that has settled on the windowsill. (Okay, it was more of a stick figure with glasses.) Sirius shrugs, resolving to check when they get back to the dorm. He’s not sure how to tell the difference between silver and steel, but… that’s a question for Sirius Half An Hour In The Future.

James hums as he thinks, tapping on his knee. “We can take notes for him in History of Magic?”

Sirius is not so keen on this suggestion. He’s all for helping Remus, but — paying attention to Binns? _Twice_?

It turns out what James means is pay attention to the first fifteen minutes and spend the rest of the lesson on a collaborative drawing in which Sirius destroys James’s village with a dragon. Then, when he realises he’s forgotten to take notes, he decides to work out how to do a duplication charm on the first fifteen minutes’ worth (something they very much have not learnt in class yet) and sets his notes on fire by accident.

When you look at it that way, the dragon kind of looks like foreshadowing.

* * *

It’s not like Sirius actively sets out to prove Remus is lying or anything; it’s just that he’s an eleven-year-old boy, and who doesn’t want to see some green toes? 

Remus is one of those weirdos who sleeps with his socks on, which makes it incredibly hard to get a good look. He considers asking, but if Remus knew he was trying to take a peek at his feet he would probably get embarrassed and make it even harder. (Sirius at least has the common sense to recognise that he wouldn’t be doing it to be mean; but Sirius is not entirely sure how to work around Remus being so shy, especially compared to James.) When he finally manages it, Remus’s toes are exactly the same colour as the rest of his foot — which is to say, not green at all. 

When they discover that they have no idea how to tell silver apart from any other metal, they ask Remus when he returns from the hospital wing, on the off chance he knows. He responds by looking like a cornered porlock, even when James explains why they want to know. “I’m allergic,” he says. “S’why I wear gloves in Potions.” Sirius can’t see the logic in that statement for a moment before he realises that some of the spoons and things they have to use are silver. It seems like real rotten luck that he’s allergic to one of the things that could help him.

When he really thinks about it, Remus doesn’t seem to have any of the symptoms the book talked about, except for how he looks exhausted all the time. The only time Remus coughs is when Sirius cracks a very excellent joke while Remus is in the middle of swallowing a mouthful of water. His hands are cold, but so’s the rest of him — when it snowed in December, Remus started wearing a jumper under his duvet. It just feels… off, to Sirius, though he can’t put his finger on why.

When he mentions all this to James and Peter while Remus is in the shower, they look unconvinced. “Why would he lie to us?” Peter points out as he unwraps a chocolate frog, biting off the head before it has a chance to wriggle away. “We’re his friends.” 

Sirius turns to James, who’s usually better at backing him up compared to Peter, but James just shrugs and says, “I guess I could write to Mum. She might know more than a single old book.” Sirius doesn’t need to be a genius to know that James is just humouring him.

Mrs Potter writes back the next day, saying things like, “There’s no such thing as spavinasia, did you mean spavinalgia?” and “I thought I raised a boy with better manners than to suggest someone is lying about their health,” and “Of course there was nothing useful in that book, it’s older than I am,” which would have been a more helpful statement if Sirius knew how old she was. When Sirius asks James, he shrugs.

The long and short of it is that James refuses to hear another word about how Remus’s story doesn’t add up, having been properly scolded about how someone’s health information is private and he has absolutely no right to accuse someone of lying about it. Sirius can sort of see where his mum was coming from… but it doesn’t stop him wondering. Peter doesn’t have any good suggestions when Sirius talks about it, even if he does let Sirius bounce ideas off him. Unfortunately, since Mrs Potter refuses to help, Sirius has nowhere else to turn. He does ask Remus if there’s something they can read to get a better understanding, but Remus says he doesn’t know of anything, changing the subject immediately to the chances of the Wasps going all the way this year. He doesn’t look at Sirius for the rest of the night.

* * *

After a few months, Sirius stops lying awake on the nights Remus is in the hospital wing, trying to think of explanations. It’s just one more thing that doesn’t quite make sense, like the mystery of how McGonagall knows whenever Sirius passes a note when her back is turned (a second set of eyes?), or how old the groundskeeper is (Sirius’s money is on immortal). They finish First Year and go home for the summer, writing often, and his parents even let him stay at the Potters’ for a week after James points out that he’s pureblood. (Sirius decides that letting on how little attention he’d paid to the blood status of his new best friends is not a wise move, and doesn’t suggest visiting Peter or Remus.)

Second Year settles into the same rhythm as the first, Remus disappearing for one or two days a month and returning pale and exhausted. The absences don’t even seem strange anymore, especially considering the frequency with which they’re all getting detentions, sometimes together and sometimes separately. (A new year brings new and exciting possibilities of rule-breaking, along with James’s brand new copy of _Jinxes and Japes_.)

And then — and then there’s the seventy-third issue of Gerald Thorpington, Hit Wizard. In Wizarding Britain’s most popular comic, Thorpington is faced this time with a werewolf who’s going around London and biting people, trying to raise up an army to overthrow the Ministry for good. The werewolf, who calls himself Phantom Fang, usually kidnaps his victims so he can indoctrinate them, but one brave woman escapes, only to present herself to Gerald with a bite mark on her leg and terrible gashes down her arm from the claws. 

It ends on a cliffhanger, as many Hit Wizard issues do, and Sirius doesn’t think of it as anything other than the introduction of an excellent new villain until Remus comes back from the Hospital Wing with scratches on his chest that look… oddly familiar.

“What’s that?”

“Hmm?” Remus says from inside his pyjama shirt. He finally finds the head hole, and pulls the shirt over the nasty cut on his collar; Sirius can still see it peeking out.

“The thing that looks like you faced off against a monster,” Sirius says, pointing to it. It looks a few days old, but it can’t be — Sirius would remember seeing it before.

“Oh,” Remus says, grabbing a jumper and putting it on, even though it’s warm enough that he doesn’t need the extra layer. “The, uh, the potions that Madam Pomfrey gives me make my skin all thin and I bleed easily. Side effect, you know.”

Sirius can’t swear that conversation is the reason Remus changes in the bathroom for the next week, but he has his suspicions.

After they say goodnight Sirius rereads the comic by the light of the just barely waning moon. Once a month, a man becomes a monster. Afterwards they appear exhausted and pale, often gaunt from all the energy diverted to the arduous process of transformation. The injuries they sustain in wolf form persist when they return to their human bodies. Their bones ache in the leadup to the full moon, as if anticipating the agony to come.

He doesn’t want to believe his friend, the one who sleeps across from him, who he trusts with everything he tolds dear, could be a monster who preys on vulnerable people as they sleep. It’s a ridiculous idea, isn’t it? Remus Lupin, a monster. He’s seen Remus pick up a confused grasshopper in the entrance hall and carry it outside. He’s not even sure Remus knows how to punch someone (although admittedly, neither does Sirius — he is working on some exciting hexes though). 

Remus Lupin is not a monster, but Sirius is forced to admit to himself, as he stares out of the window at the moon, that he might be a werewolf.

* * *

Most teachers would use “impulsive” to describe Sirius. He acts first and asks questions later. Playing out all the possibilities and putting failsafes in place is so much less exciting than just doing what feels good at the time. He’s not sure what McGonagall would say if she knew that he sits with this new, terrifying knowledge for a whole month before he shares it, ducking off to the library when he can get away with it to read everything he can find on the subject. He’s never been so aware that what he does next could have impossibly large consequences.

At last, when Remus leaves for the hospital wing, Sirius gathers James and Peter in their dorm and says, “Remus is a werewolf.”

There’s a beat of silence before Peter laughs, snorting and saying, “Good one, mate.” James doesn’t laugh — he’s staring at Sirius, frowning.

“No, I’m serious. Look,” Sirius says, drawing back the curtain around his bed to reveal the stack of books he set up earlier to support a number of sheets of paper where he’s laid it all out in large, messy letters. He carefully levitates the top sheet (“Remus Lupin: Werewolf or Spavinalgia?”) and sets it aside, revealing two lists, one of lycanthropy symptoms and one of spavinalgia symptoms.

“Which of these sounds more like Remus?” he asks. “The person who’s skinny and hungry and tired and can’t touch silver, or the person who’s got a ruddy face and coughs all the time and has green toes?”

“I mean, why can’t I accuse you of being a werewolf, since you had thirds of pudding last night?” James says. “Of course we’re hungry and tired, we’re growing.”

“But I don’t disappear once a month, always on the full moon, do I?” Sirius says, pointing out the window. He levitates the next sheet of paper to reveal the dates of the last six full moons and how they correlate with the evenings that Remus goes to the hospital wing. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but all the facts fit.”

“‘Cept,” Peter interjects, “the fact where he’s our friend, and there’s no way they’d let a werewolf go to Hogwarts.”

“Well, they wouldn’t let a werewolf roam the castle during his transformation, sure, but they must have some way of controlling him when he’s like that,” Sirius says. “I haven’t found anything that works to calm them down or anything, but maybe they can — put him in a really strong box, or something. Somewhere he can’t hurt anyone. He’s only a werewolf one night a month, and the rest of the time he’s just as capable of learning spells as anyone.”

“But he’s our friend,” James says, repeating the point that Sirius had not addressed. 

“Yeah, but you gotta admit I have a point. Can’t he be our friend _and_ a werewolf?” Sirius asks.

“Because—” James visibly flounders for a moment. “Because that kind of thing only happens in stories. And he’s too nice to be a werewolf. They’re scary and angry and violent and I’ve never seen him be any of those things.”

“We’ve never seen him being a werewolf, though! Maybe he is scary and violent when he’s a wolf.”

“Why are you so desperate to prove he’s lying?” James asks, fighting back far more than Sirius thought he would. “Why would you want him to be a werewolf?”

“I don’t want him to be a werewolf,” Sirius says, and then considers for a moment. “Okay, I mean, it sounds extremely cool, but it also sounds like it hurts a lot? So I don’t really want him to be a werewolf. Mostly. But it makes way more sense than this stupid disease he clearly doesn’t have because his toes aren’t green.”

“Mum said that just because he doesn’t have one symptom doesn’t mean he can’t possibly have the disease, and also we don’t know that he doesn’t have green toes!”

“I’ve seen his toes!”

“Yeah, but maybe they’re green some other time, or maybe he just doesn’t have the green toes. He wouldn’t lie to us.”

“He’d lie to us if he was afraid. We know he already has, back when he said his cousin was getting married and his mum was sick.” This is the bit Sirius doesn’t like thinking about too hard, where Remus must think of them as a threat. 

“Afraid of what?” Peter asks. He sounds like he hasn’t entirely followed what’s happening.

“Afraid of people saying he’s a monster!”

“He _is_ a monster, though,” Peter says. “If he’s a werewolf, I mean,” he adds, glancing at James.

“He’s our friend! He’s the same Remus, it’s just that he’s also a werewolf. Look, I checked every book in the library about it, you can’t tell if someone is a werewolf except at the full moon. But being a werewolf is definitely painful, and everyone thinks they’re all evil and… and it must be so lonely.” Sirius keeps coming back to this, over and over: Remus must be so _alone_. What kind of friends are they, to convince him he can’t share a part of who he is?

“Well — if you’re right, what do you want to do about it?” James asks, and Sirius knows he hasn’t accepted it yet, but at least he’s willing to entertain it.

“We’ve got to tell him we know,” Sirius says, and in response Peters nods but James shakes his head.

“Why? He obviously doesn’t want us to know.”

“Because he must think we’d hate him!” After a beat, Sirius admits, “Also, I really want to know what it’s like to run around as a werewolf, because that bit sounds extremely cool.”

“That would be very cool,” Peter agrees. “Do you think he runs around the grounds? Or the Forbidden Forest! Maybe that’s why it’s forbidden!”

“The Forbidden Forest was forbidden when my parents went to school,” James says, but Sirius can see it in his face — he’s no longer fighting the obvious fact that Sirius is right.

The rest of the night is lost in conversations of what they would do, were they given four legs and a tail, and as they’re getting into their uniforms before breakfast, James says, “So how are we going to tell him?”

“Depends when he comes back,” Sirius says. He still hasn’t figured that out — why does Remus stay in the hospital wing sometimes for a whole day, the night after the full moon, and sometimes he returns to class after lunch? “But I think we should wait until we’re back here, whenever he does.”

Remus doesn’t join them for lunch, or for the first class after. When they arrive at Charms, though, he’s already waiting for them, scribbling what looks like the last of his homework just as Flitwicks walks in. He’s quiet, like his energy has been siphoned out of him — and Sirius supposes it has, if he doesn’t sleep while he’s the wolf. 

Most people turn towards the grounds, taking advantage of the weather warming up to lie in the grass or harass the various creatures that dwell in the lake. Instead of following, they turn back towards the tower, and when they get to the dorm Remus sets down his bag and collapses on his bed, closing his eyes.

Should they do it now? Sirius looks to James for guidance, but he shrugs, and Peter just stares back, Sirius’s uncertainty reflected in him. May as well.

“We know you’re a werewolf,” he says. There’s no way to make that land softer; he only thinks he should have looked for one after he’s said it, when Remus goes tense and holds his breath. 

Remus opens his eyes, looking cautiously around as if he’s going to find that Sirius is talking to someone else. He doesn’t meet anyone’s eye, and stares up at the canopy as he says, “What?”

“You don’t have spavinalgia, you’re a werewolf,” Sirius says, and this time he can see the blood draining out of Remus’s face. “It’s okay, we’re not cross with you or anything. We just want to know how we can help.”

Remus makes a sort of strangled sound that Sirius thinks is accidental; he starts as if he doesn’t know who made it before sitting up and looking at his hands. Sirius sees his mouth open and close a few times, no sound coming out. “You can’t,” he says at last, sounding — resigned. It’s not the emotion Sirius would have predicted.

Instead of saying anything else — like asking how they found out, or being angry that they’ve revealed his secret — Remus just gets up and takes his trunk out from under his bed and begins emptying his drawers into it, as if packing for home.

“What are you doing?” Sirius asks, looking at James and Peter to see if they feel as confused as he does. He receives twin looks of bewilderment.

“Packing,” Remus says, and sniffs. He sounds like he’s trying not to cry, but failing.

“Why?”

“May as well get a head start, they’re going to expel me as soon as they find out you know.”

“Wh—” Sirius isn’t even sure what question he wants to ask, but James interrupts him.

“So it’s true, then.”

Remus is definitely crying as he nods. 

“We’re not going to tell anyone,” Sirius says. That’s been the unspoken assumption Sirius has been working under the whole time — who would they tell? Why?

“What?” Remus says. He wipes his nose on his sleeve as he stares at Sirius for the first time in this conversation.

“We know it’s a secret, we won’t tell anyone. They can’t expel you for telling us because you didn’t, and they won’t know that we know unless we say anything, so we won’t.”

“But…” Remus says, trailing off for a moment. “But — you — you’re alright with me sleeping here? With you?”

“Yes?” Sirius says, baffled. “You’re not a wolf in the dormitory. We’ve lived with you just fine for almost two years.”

“But — Dad said that I can’t let anyone know, even if I trust them. Because even if you mean you won’t tell anyone, you’ll do it by accident, or someone could force it out of you. It could put you in danger, _I_ could put you in danger, and — I don't want any of you to die. Werewolves kill people, and I don't want you to die."

Sirius has not actually put all that much thought into how Remus would react to the news. Now, as he stares at Remus who has dissolved into tears again, his face in his hands, he thinks that was probably an oversight. Sirius looks desperately at James, who manages to say “I told you so” extremely clearly without opening his mouth at all.

“You’ve not killed us yet,” Peter says, “so if you don’t want to then I don’t see why you would start now.”

Remus doesn’t even seem to hear him.

“If you’re so worried about the information getting out of us somehow,” Sirius says, “then we’ll take an Unbreakable Vow.”

“We will?” Peter says, alarmed.

Remus looks up and sniffs loudly. His face remains pretty much covered in snot, but Sirius appreciates the effort. “What do you mean?”

“You know, an Unbreakable Vow,” Sirius repeats, and then at Remus’s blank look he continues, “where you promise something and then you do a spell and then if the person breaks the promise they _die_.”

“I think my great-uncle died from an Unbreakable Vow,” Peter says. “No one would tell me what the vow was. I did have to promise my aunt that I would never make one, though. Can I just promise the normal way?”

“No, we all have to do it!” Sirius insists. “James, do you know what you’re supposed to say, when you wave your wand over the handshake and stuff?”

“...No? I didn’t even know you shook hands. What makes you think I would know?”

“Because, you know,” Sirius says, making several hand gestures that he suspects communicate nothing to his friends. “You’ve surely like… watched through a keyhole as some family friends did one in the drawing room? Kreacher interrupted us right when they said the words though, so I didn’t hear them.”

James shakes his head slowly. “I’m pretty sure it was mentioned once on the radio soap Mum listens to? I didn’t even know people still did it for real.”

Sirius is beginning to think maybe this is not quite as normal a part of life as he assumed. He’s not sure what that says about his family, and decides to never think about it.

“We could go look it up in the library?” he suggests, but Peter shakes his head.

“If my great-uncle died, it’s probably in the restricted section,” he points out. Sirius deflates. He can’t think of any other way to convince Remus, since he’s pretty sure that swearing on his entire Hit Wizard collection probably won’t do it.

“Look, I promise we won’t die. We’ve not died yet, and it’s not like we’re anywhere near you when you’re a wolf. Plus, I’m pretty sure that the torturing for information thing only happens in comic books or spy novels.” Remus still looks pretty worried, so he adds, “If we ever stop being friends you have my permission to hex me with every spell you know.” 

Remus takes a long moment to stare at him, James and Peter in turn. Sirius does his absolute best to look completely serious (haha), because he is. “You two promise too?” he says to James and Peter.

“About the hexing thing? I guess,” Peter says.

“He means about the werewolf thing, you twit,” Sirius says.

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Peter hurries to say. “Won’t tell a soul.”

“My lips are sealed,” James says, miming sealing his lips and throwing away the key.

Remus takes a shaky breath. “Alright. I guess — alright.” It doesn’t look like he’s capable of finding more words that aren’t ‘alright’, so Sirius grins in an effort to lighten the atmosphere.

“Does that mean you’ll tell us about how you get those wicked cuts on your chest?”

Remus looks confused for a moment and then giggles, though it still sounds a bit like a sob. He giggles for far longer than the question (which wasn’t funny at all) calls for, but Sirius waits him out. “Yeah, sure,” Remus says, sitting back down on his bed. Sirius sits next to him, close enough for their shoulders to touch, and James and Peter sit on Sirius’s bed opposite. Remus still holds himself a little stiffly, but Sirius can see him starting to relax by degrees. He even leans on Sirius a little, just enough that Sirius can feel his reassuring weight and warmth through his jumper, which is what he’d done when Sirius’s rat (Ratty, RIP) died back in November. Sirius knows that he should be the one comforting Remus, but he still feels reassured by the gentle pressure. Remus isn’t going anywhere, and he doesn’t have to hide anymore.

“So before I transform, Madam Pomfrey takes me through this tunnel underneath the Whomping Willow…”


End file.
